


Lockdown

by just_your_average_ultracrepidarian



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M, ships with one immortal character, what even is canon timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 13:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4102804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_your_average_ultracrepidarian/pseuds/just_your_average_ultracrepidarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack can't die, but Ianto can.  That's a fact that becomes relevant at the most unexpected times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lockdown

Ianto nearly dropped the coffees as he mounted the steps. His feet got caught on the stack of firewood piled haphazardly near the top and he stumbled to the top, stretching out his arms to maintain his balance and sloshing the scalding liquid over his hand.

“ _Shit_ — ” He righted the cups and bit back the pain.

“Language!” Jack appeared at the railing. “We’re professionals, Ianto.”

“Professionals who leave their toys out on the stairs?” He slid the coffees onto Tosh’s desk and investigated his hand. “This is going to leave a mark.”

Jack came to meet him. “Those aren’t toys, we’re having a bonfire.” He leaned in and exchanged a good morning kiss. Ianto would call it a peck, but Jack didn’t do pecks; even his offhand contact was careful and lingering.

“Mmm. A bonfire.” Ianto handed off one of the coffees. 

Jack accepted it and took his hand as well, bringing it up for inspection. “You’ll live. Get Owen to put cream on it.” He sipped the coffee and bent to pick up an armful of the wood. “We’re celebrating — it’s Gwen’s year and a half anniversary here.”

Ianto picked the cups back up and followed his boss to the conference room. “You thought you’d celebrate by standing around some burning wood?”

They entered the room together, and Jack answered his question by addressing the whole room. “We’ve got a naysayer, folks. It seems fire is to Ianto what camping is to Owen.”

“Bugger off,” Gwen chided Ianto amiably. “We’re celebrating.”

“I’ve heard.” He wove around the table, offering coffee to each person in turn, before getting to her. “Congratulations,” he told her, offering her cup with a hug. “Glad to have you with us.”

“Ooh, Ianto, you’ll make me cry.” She glanced at his hand. “What happened?”

Jack intercepted the question. “Rug burn,” he answered. “He gets enthusiastic.”

Tosh frowned. “Enthusiastic doing…?”

“Ah, no, don’t answer that.” Owen grimaced and waved Jack away. “God, you’re awful.”

“I spilled coffee,” Ianto spoke to thin air. “On my hand. In case that was a real question.”

“All right, people, let’s get this show on the road!” Jack carried the wood back out the door, and they followed, winding down stairs to the lab.

“Cheery party, this,” Gwen said, watching Jack arrange the wood on the operating table they usually reserved for corpses or soon-to-be corpses.

“Oi, that’s sterile!” Owen’s warning went unheeded as they crowded around the table.

Each of their faces were alight with the ease of the day. Times worth celebrating had been few and far in between recently, and their work kept them so busy that it was a near miracle for a slow day to coincide with a holiday of sorts. The atmosphere was giddy with just the right level carelessness. As likely as not, in ten minutes they’d be called away to work, but for now they were bumping elbows and trading jokes while Jack broke match after match trying to light the wood and Tosh surprised them with s’mores supplies.

“You sure you’ve got this, sir?” Ianto watched his boss’s fruitless efforts with raised eyebrows.

“Fuck off,” Jack fired back.

“Language,” they chorused.

“We’re professionals, remember,” Ianto deadpanned.

“You want to try?” He offered the matchbox to Ianto, who backed off.

“I’ve got enough burns for one day,” he said.

Owen glanced at his hand. “Oh, I’ve got something for that, sit tight.” He turned and rummaged through one of his drawers, coming up with an unmarked white tube of paste. “I think this is it.” He tossed it, and Ianto fumbled for the catch. “I’ve got a few of these floating around, at least one of them is burn cream.”

Ianto unscrewed the cap. A strong chemical smell hit his nose almost immediately. “And the others are...?”

“Er, molecular dissolvents.”

“Right.” Ianto pocketed it without using it as soon as Owen had turned away. Given the choice, he’d keep the pain from the burn over risking losing his entire hand.

“I was in a war, I should know how to light a match,” Jack growled, still hacking away at the matchbox.

“Let me try,” Gwen wheedled. He surrendered the matches and they watched with bated breath as she positioned the match head. She struck with a confident, fluid motion, snapping it cleaning in half.

“Okay, you know what this method needs? Modernization.” Jack slapped Ianto’s shoulder as he passed on his way back up the stairs. “C’mon, let’s find a real, live cigarette lighter.”

“Fine, leave us. We’ll be here in the Dark Ages, with our little wooden sticks,” Gwen called after them. The sounds of scraping wood and Tosh and Owen starting to bicker about marshmallow sizes faded as Ianto and Jack left them behind.

Ianto pointed down the stairs. “I think there may be a lighter in the cells, we used it when we had to interrogate the — ”

They’d barely gotten out of earshot of the others when Jack dropped the pretense. He pushed Ianto back against the wall and bridged the remaining few inches, kissing him far more roughly than he had earlier.

It took a minute for Ianto to clear his head and push him back a little. “Ah — sir, the, uh, lighter?”

Jack grinned, his breathing ragged. “Sure, yeah, let’s go down to the empty cells, all alone, and search for a lighter.”

Ianto straightened his suit. “After you, sir,” he said, his voice deceptively even.

The cells were indeed empty. The entire team knew which row had a camera out, and nobody knew that blind spot better than Jack and Ianto. They were well on their way to entirely forgetting about the lighter only moments before the sharp smell of smoke reminded them of their business.

“They must’ve gotten it lit,” Ianto commented, his voice hitching as Jack’s lips pressed to his neck.

“Mm, good for them.” Jack kept moving his mouth, steadily gravitating downward.

“They’ll notice we’re gone,” Ianto pointed out, straining to keep his thoughts in his head. “They’ll look — _aaahhh_ — down here for us — oh, _fuck_ —”

“Language,” Jack murmured into his skin.

The fire alarm sounded so suddenly that they both jumped. Jack shot up as Ianto overbalanced and fell forward, and they knocked heads violently. Ianto’s vision went black for a second. Blinded and deafened by the shrill alarm, he felt for his shirt and pulled it over his head.

Another noise, a grating sound, joined the mix. Both of them looked to the far end of the corridor where the sound was coming from and watched as a heavy concrete wall slid into place, sealing them off.

“Lockdown protocol,” Jack groaned. “I forgot about the fire alarm.”

Ianto stared at the concrete wall. “Not to be frank, sir, but isn’t it a little impractical to have protocol that traps people in parts of the building?”

“It doesn’t.” Jack gestured to where the end of the cell row led to the rest of the basement. “There’s an emergency exit down here, and in every other area that gets sealed off. Just, ah, the problem is the one down here got its hinges melted down the last time we had a dragon in here.”

“We had a dragon?” Ianto shrugged on his jacket.

“Baby one.” He scanned the room and found what he wanted hidden away on mostly empty shelving. “Here, emergency comms. Provided they still work, we can get Tosh to lift the lockdown.”

Luckily for them, not everything in the basement was as run down as the exit. Within a few minutes, the comm crackled to life and Tosh's voice sounded over it, calling their names.

"Toshiko!" Jack said in relief. "All right, so you guys are better at lighting a match than we are. Point proven. Let us out."

"Would if I could, Jack," she responded. "But the computers are in the main section, and that's sealed off separately from us. I can't get to the controls."

Jack stood in silence for a minute. Ianto recognized his thinking face and took over communication with Tosh. "Our doors are jammed, so I really hope you didn't actually set anything on fire, ‘cause we’re stuck down here."

"Owen tried his best, but no, it was just the wood. And we put that out when the alarm went off."

Ianto nodded. "So how long until the lockdown lifts?"

There was a staticky silence, and Ianto got the feeling that she and Jack were wearing the same troubled expression. It was Jack who broke the silence first. "Tosh, your doors are open, right?"

"Yes, but --"

"Okay, don't argue, just get out. Ah, take what you can, tools, whatever, and see if you can get to the basement doors."

"Hang on --" Ianto looked to Jack. "What's wrong? Who's arguing?"

Jack glanced at him, and Ianto got the crawling feeling that this was much more serious than an irritating little incident they’d laugh about once they were free. "Okay, I'm going to explain this once, and we don't have time for questions, so listen.” He nodded, and Jack continued. “The lockdown is engaged for three hours, and if we can't override it, then we are stuck here for those three hours. And ordinarily, being trapped in a small area with a gorgeous boy and three hours to do nothing would be my idea of — well, paradise. Unfortunately, it's hard to enjoy those three hours without oxygen. And after about twenty minutes, each section of the building will slowly lose its oxygen in order to starve the theoretical flames. However, it's also going to starve human lungs in the event that anybody gets trapped in the building."

Ianto was speechless, but he didn't stay that way for long. "With all due respect, that's the worst safety system I've ever heard of."

"Is it?" Jack was already striding towards the back of the basement. "We have life-changing technology and research that is our number one priority to protect. We have to strike a balance — a few human lives, or the fate of the world population?"

Ianto grabbed the comm and followed him. "Tell that to our starving lungs." And then, like always when they faced life threatening situations together, he remembered. "Or I guess _my_ starving lungs."

He didn't mean to sound bitter, but Jack took the comment seriously. He stopped in his tracks and glared down at him. "Nobody's lungs are going to do any starving."

"All right, all right," he backed off, not remotely reassured.

They located the supposed emergency exit. Not only had the hinges been melted into a nonfunctioning metal cast, but the doorknob and half of the door itself was missing. Steel sheets had been bolted over the hole and attached to the wall, effectively rendering the door about as passable as the walls themselves.

The comm crackled. "We're out, but we can't find the basement’s exit."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Sewage drain, by the main road."

"Right, uh, we're there, but it looks like construction's been done. They've blocked off this whole area."

"Tosh, I'm sure the government will forgive you for knocking over a no-trespassing sign."

This time, it was Owen's voice on the line. "We're talking cement blocks. They poured new foundations, and the perception filter made it impossible for them to see the fact that they were burying half a door."

Ianto knew it was only nerves already making his lungs feel like they were shrinking, but he loosened his tie all the same. "Well, there is still the matter of the top half of the door." 

Jack banged on the upper part of the door, and they heard one of the others knock back. It would have been a more reassuring sound had the knock not given off a deep, metallic noise that said it would be no small feat to cut through. "All we need is an air hole for now. Should be easy."

There was a muttered conference on the other end of the coms. Ianto and Jack both silently eavesdropped.

"Can we get through it?" Gwen's voice asked.

"Tough to say — we don't have anything high tech." Tosh sounded doubtful.

"High tech or not, we need to start now," Owen pointed out. "Timer says twelve minutes until the vents pull their oxygen, so standing here doing nothing won't help."

"I agree with Owen," Ianto interrupted fervently.

Jack nodded. "We'll see what we can find down here to help." The urgency of the situation was just starting to settle in on them. They were going at a reinforced steel door with medical instruments; it was hardly an ideal plan. None of them wanted to think about what would happen if it fell through.

Ianto and Jack jogged through the corridors, passing drop cloths and fragile technology and a hundred locked boxes whose keys were upstairs in Jack's office. “There’s no way to override it with voice commands?” Ianto checked as they started to rifle through drawers.

“In theory, if there’s a fire, nobody should be in the building to override anything.” Jack strode across the room, ripping drawers free and overturning them, spilling the contents everywhere. Papers spread over the floor, office supplied rolling under desks, odd knick-knacks and harmless artifacts that had been long since forgotten bouncing and coming to rest against the wall.

“All right,” he said defensively. “It’s just that you’re not the one who’s going to die down here, so I want to make sure we’ve tried everything.” Ianto followed Jack out of the room and back to the cells.

“Yeah, well, guess what, you’re not dying down here either.” Jack’s voice was angry, but Ianto knew him well enough to understand that it wasn’t directed at him. It was the fire that sprang up in dangerous situations, a flame that got his team out of trouble time and time again. Ianto never had that spark, but then again, it had been fire that got them into this situation in the first place.

Ianto swept his hand over a desk and heard something clank as it hit the floor. He stooped and came up with a pair of wrenches.

“Good enough,” Jack said, grabbing one. They hurried back to the door. “How’s it going, Gwen?” he asked the comm.

Owen answered for her. “Oh, stellar, we’re going at a solid steel door with a drill that’s built to cut through paper-thin bone.” There was a feathery whir from the other side of the door as if proving his point.

Ianto’s heart dropped. “How much time do we have?”

“Ah…” Gwen sounded like she’d rather not tell him. “Seven minutes.”

“That’s plenty of time,” Jack said bravely. “Keep going. We’ve got wrenches, so we’ll work from our end.”

As the whirring and banging continued from behind the door, Ianto inspected the hinges and bolts, looking for something the wrench could find purchase on, but the surface were melted smooth. Jack went for a more direct approach, attacking the door with such violence that it dented under the first blow of his wrench.

“All we need is — a tiny hole,” he said between swings. “To let the air back in. Damn, airtight _was_ a stupid idea.”

“Language,” Iano reprimanded, but it was hard to find humor in their situation now. He settling in to work side by side with Jack, his efforts much less powerful than the Captain’s.

“Three minutes,” Tosh warned them tensely. Jack’s eyes flashed and he drove forward harder, putting his weight into the task. Ianto could barely get a swing in edgewise; eventually, the best thing he could do was move out of the way and let Jack take over. The dent got deeper and deeper with each blow, but the metal refused to give.

“Sixty seconds.” Now Tosh sounded desperate. Jack hacked at the door, sweating with effort, and Ianto began to panic. Trapped in their own basement was an awful, undignified way to die. And Jack — Ianto shuddered — Jack would have to watch him go, knowing there was nothing more he could to do. And then he’d suffer for hours more, dying and waking to find Ianto’s body over and over.

Tosh’s voice anxiously started a countdown. “Ten… nine…”

“Jack!” Gwen shouted. “I can see the door buckling from this side, but if you’re going to get anywhere, we have to stop working against you.”

“So stop!” he yelled back, swinging the wrench with furious energy.

“Six… five…”

“We can’t just leave you!” She sounded frantic. Ianto was paralyzed with fear. Would the oxygen drain out slowly or be sucked out all at once? How much time did he have left? How many more breaths would he be allowed?

“Three… two…”

Jack kept hammering as a new sound started. It was like the building itself was breathing. A ventilation system was switching on and beginning to draw the air out of the Hub. Ianto heaved deep breaths, trying to keep as much of that air for himself as he could.

Gwen and Owen’s voices shouted Jack on over the comm. Ianto knew Tosh would be standing back, hands over her mouth, to terrified to speak. He started to gasp.

“Don’t you dare hyperventilate on me,” Jack warned, slamming the wrench down again and again. “We — need — this — air.”

“Jack,” he wheezed. “You can’t — ”

“Can’t what? Get us out? Fucking watch me!”

The air was thin by now. Ianto’s heart was pulsing in his ears. He didn’t want to die — but if he had to, he couldn’t do it alone. He couldn’t. “Please, Jack,” he broke in, catching his eye. An unspoken realization passed between them. They weren’t going to get out of this, not by beating their way free with _wrenches_.

The tool slipped out of Jack’s fingers and clattered on the ground. The only sound now was the comm’s static and the building pressing in on them, slowly suffocating them.

Ianto slid to the floor. “Sit with me,” he pleaded hoarsely. He needed Jack to hold him. He needed someone to ground him so he wouldn’t grab that wrench and waste his last moments believing he had hope.

Jack dropped down beside him, pulling him in, as though if he could get Ianto close enough he could protect him from what was coming. “This isn’t how it ends,” he said fiercely, brokenly.

“Respectfully, sir,” Ianto answered, “shut up.”

Jack tried to laugh, but his voice was unsteady. “Who’s going to bring me coffee if you die?”

He had to gasp to get the breath to answer. “Americans and their coffee.” He shook his head, dragging more air into his lungs, forming the words he needed to say, words he’d held back because Jack was so far from boyfriend material that it was laughable to call him anything beyond a fuck buddy, a friend with benefits. But if he were to have last words, he knew what he wanted them to be, what they had to be, ridiculous or not. “I — love — you.”

Jack’s face was going red with the effort it took to breathe. “Ianto — ” He ran out of air and instead grabbed Ianto’s hand, squeezing hard enough that it substituted for the words he couldn’t say. The pressure elicited a shot of pain, and Ianto remembered the burn. How odd it was that he’d thought that would be the worst thing to happen to him today. The solution for that had been as easy as burn cream. This? It wasn’t quite as fixable.

The burn cream. It hit him in one piercing ray of clarity. He pulled the tube out; Jack’s eyes dropped to it, and Ianto’s failing brain played over the conversation of an hour ago.

_“At least one of them is burn cream.”_

_“And the others are...?”_

_“Er, molecular dissolvents.”_

Ianto’s lungs were burning. He could feel his vision going black, but against all odds, he forced himself to start towards the door. Jack tried to help him, but both of them were too weak to do more than crawl.

Suddenly, instead of pushing, Jack’s hands were pulling, dragging him back, away from the door. Ianto lashed out, confused — _we can’t quit yet_ , he wanted to scream. But by now he was dizzy and could barely tell up from down; Jack used this to his advantage and twisted Ianto around. He pressed their lips together.

At first, Ianto thought it was just a goodbye kiss, and he tried to fight it, holding up the cream and trying to communicate that they still had a chance even as his own mind floundered to hold on. But then, unexpectedly, he felt breath returning to him. It wasn’t a kiss; Jack was giving him the last of his air.

As Jack released him, Ianto realized that the building was silent now. There was no more oxygen to take from them; this was it. He scrambled upward, adrenalin and Jack’s final breath propelling him to his feet. Behind him, Jack collapsed.

His fingers felt thick and ungainly as he unscrewed the tube’s cap. It dropped from his hands and rolled across the floor, coming to rest again Jack’s body. Hazily, Ianto directed the tube at the dent Jack had made and squeezed with the last vestiges of his strength. The cream was white; most of it dropped to the floor, poorly aimed as Ianto swayed against the wall. But some of it hit the target — enough that it was clear after a moment that nothing was happening. 

It wasn’t working.

Ianto’s legs gave out. His head cracked against the cement floor, and the last thing he registered was a jerk of movement as Jack revived beside him.

_It was just burn cream,_ he thought, losing consciousness. _Owen gave me burn cream._

He was too far gone to feel the hands that heaved him forward, a massive feat for a man who’d just died and was once more rapidly deteriorating. What he did feel was the wash of cold air that hit his face, so startling that it felt as though he’d been pushed underwater.

It was just a pinprick of a hole at first, such a tiny supply of air that it hardly made a difference. But the cream — the beautiful dissolving cream — ate through more and more of the steel, widening the hole to the size of a penny, and then to the point that Owen and Gwen could get in and tear at its edges. Ianto gasped, the return of breath to his body so painful that he felt worse, not better.

“Ianto!” Tosh’s voice cried from behind Gwen, who was shouting Jack’s name. Owen worked in silence, his determined face hovering over the hole.

Ianto’s throat was raw, and his chest felt like he’d ripped a hundred holes in it, but he was breathing. Unable to pay full attention to his own pain, he crawled to where Jack was slumped against the wall. His fingers pressed against Jack’s neck, but his own heart was pumping too fast for him to be sure if the pulse he felt was his own or the Captain’s. “Jack,” he coughed, feeling blood in the back of his mouth. He was trembling from head to foot, but he dragged Jack’s body into his lap all the same.

“Are you all right?” Gwen called to him. Her voice echoed eerily over the comm.

“Fine,” he tried to say, but it came out strangled. He stared down at Jack’s face, waiting for the twitch that would signal his awakening. Moments passed; Ianto started to feel his breath getting short again. What kind of sick irony would it be if Jack had died and Ianto had survived?

It was an agonizingly long time before he was rewarded with the sight of Jack’s eyes flying open. Jack convulsed, sitting straight up and choking on his first few breaths. Ianto grabbed his shoulder, steadying him as he got his bearings.

“Ianto,” he said as soon as he could talk.

“Sir,” he responded, a grin spreading over his face. He got to his feet slowly and offered his hand to Jack. They were both shaky on their feet, but desperate to be out of the trap, they made their way to the door, where the opening was just wide enough for them to crawl through. Ianto went first, the sudden pressure to be free of the claustrophobic basement making him clumsy. He tore the leg of his pants on the jagged hole in his haste to get outside. The Cardiff air had never felt so good on Ianto’s skin. Gwen and Tosh helped Jack out, and they trudged out of the sewer to sit by the side of the road. Owen set to work examining them as they sat together, still breathing hard.

“You two are lucky bastards,” Owen announced, stepping back. “You’ll both have a zinger of a sore throat for a while, and probably some fluid buildup, but that’s it.”

“We nearly die and the only consequence is a cold?” Ianto shook his head. “I love Torchwood.”

Gwen kept apologizing to them, apparently wracked with guilt that her year and a half anniversary celebration had tripped the alarm. “I’m so sorry, I should have known it was a stupid idea.”

Jack shouted her down. “Worst alarm system I’ve ever set up,” he told her. “That’s on me.”

“Yeah, it is,” Ianto muttered.

Jack ignored him. “You know what would make this better? Alcohol.”

“As your doctor, I’d advise against that,” Owen warned. “But as your employee? You’re buying.”

“We do have to wait out the lockdown,” Tosh reasoned.

Gwen nodded. “I need a pick me up.”

“Great, we all agree.” Jack stood and helped Ianto to his feet. “Let’s call it a day and celebrate Gwen with drinking instead of dying.”

“Yeah, thanks, I’d prefer that,” she said. “Just a sec, let’s clean up here.” She, Owen, and Tosh left them by the side of the road while they went back to get the tools.

Ianto was trying to beat some of the dirt off of his coat when he felt fingers brush against his cheek and turned to find Jack staring at him. “Sorry, just — I have a question.” He tipped his head. “Down there, right before we, uh, passed out? You said something and I wanted to check if that it wasn’t just… sort of a spur of the moment type thing. And it’s totally fine if it is, by the way, because I understand wanting to have someone there, you know, someone who’s yours — ”

Ianto cut him off. “No, sir. I don’t do spur of the moment.” And he didn’t. For better or for worse, he’d never meant anything in his life more than he had meant those three words. He thought it might be awful to admit that to himself, that he’d be scared or that it would be too soon after Lisa. But the past was the past, and in the here and now, he’d never felt safer, even facing the man who’d nearly gotten him killed. Those three words felt right.

Jack nodded, processing this, and for a beat Ianto took in his expressionless face and thought maybe he’d overstepped his bounds, thought that his boss was going to give him the speech about professionalism in the workplace. He backtracked, trying to think of a way he could take it back; if this cost him their casual relationship, he didn’t think he could stand it.

He shouldn’t have worried. Jack took Ianto into his arms, equal parts protective and possessive, and it was the easiest thing in the world to press his face into Jack’s neck and lose himself in the fact that he could feel this much for someone, even after all he’d been through.

“God help me, Ianto Jones,” Jack sighed. “I don’t do relationships, you know.” Inato stiffened, but Jack shook his head and laughed. “I guess you’re going to have to be the exception.”

They pulled away from each other as the others reappeared. “I always knew my coffee-making skills would get someone to notice me,” Ianto said as they headed for the car.

“Right, yeah, I love you for your coffee.” Jack rolled his eyes and went around to the driver’s side. Ianto took his place in the backseat, stuck with the uncomfortable middle seat with Tosh and Gwen walling him in on either side. He’d always be the underdog at this job, the one who burned his hand on coffee and had to sit in the seat no one else wanted. That might bother him occasionally, but at times, like now, he felt he could be content to be the tea boy — as long as it was Jack in the front seat.


End file.
